Junkyard Dogs 1: The Scrapyard Incident (16 page)

"We'll have
to be gettin' one of the projectiles from the port side magazine. This one
be
empty. Give us a couple of minutes."

Hawkins and
Carlisle went over to the port magazine and each grabbed a projectile. The
projectiles were just under a meter in length, one hundred and thirty
millimeters in diameter and massed about a hundred and ten kilos each. They
maneuvered the projectiles carefully back to the starboard side and into the
turret. Hawkins showed Carlisle how to manually load the gun.

"Okay,
Lieutenant, I
be
ready to fire."

"Just a
minute, Hawk, I want to go outside with the Lieutenant and watch from there
when you fire," said Carlisle.

Hawkins could see
how excited she was.

"I suppose
that's nay too much to ask, Lass."

Two minutes
later, Carlisle was tethered beside Harris onboard the
Rover I
.

"Okay, Hawk,
fire when ready," said Harris.

Hawkins performed
the same countdown as before.

"Three, two, one...fire!"

This time a far
more significant tremor than what they had experienced earlier rattled the old
destroyer. Harris quickly made a few deft movements at the controls of the
Rover
as the recoil from the mass driver
tipped the bow down and drove the ship slightly rearward. With the old ship at
rest, and the mass driver actually acting on the mass of a projectile, instead
of the empty tube they had dry fired a short time earlier, the recoil was surprisingly
violent. Stopping the movement of the old ship was a real challenge for Harris
as the sled was securely, but only loosely, attached to the side of the old
destroyer. At the range they were firing, the projectile, moving at nearly
eight thousand meters per second, ripped into the bridge of the battlecruiser
almost instantaneously. The armor piercing round went clean through the old
hulk without detonating and continued out into deep space. A cheer went up from
the small group of survivors.

"Hooray!"
shouted Carlisle, "The
Terrier
is toothless no more!"

The group allowed
themselves a few more minutes of celebration before getting back to business.
Hawkins worked his way back out to the
Rover,
emerging from the old destroyer with a big grin on his face.

"That
could've been worse!"

"Great job,
you two!" said Harris. "Now that we've got the gun working, we need
to do a better job of integrating the
Rover
I
with the
Terrier
for moving her
over to our ambush spot and maneuvering her if we have to fight." He
checked the time on his suit display and shook his head. "We've got no
time to waste. It can't be very long until they get here. When they flip over
to decelerate and we can see their drive signatures, they'll only be a couple
of hours away."

"Request permission
to continue working on the ramming plan as a backup," said Carlisle.
"If the gun stops working, we'd still have a fall back weapon."

"Plan B.
That sounds like a good idea," said Harris.

"The holo
display showed what looks like a good hiding spot on the other side of the
corridor from that cluster we talked about. I'll take the
Rover II
and check it out. Then I'll have to see if I can find
something big and jagged to throw at them."

"Do
it," said Harris. "We're getting short of time."

With so little
time to prepare, the two men simply set the
Rover
I
down on the hull of the destroyer in front of the bridge, right behind
the forward turret, and lashed it securely in place. Destroyers were usually
hauling something that wouldn't fit inside them and the decks were equipped
with a large number of cleats, docking rings and other protuberances perfect
for tying down the sled. The spot they had chosen also had the advantage of
being reasonably close to the center of mass for the old ship, at least as close
as they could get to it given the obvious limitations imposed by the
requirement that they be on the outside and on top of the ship. Being close to
the center of mass would make any kind of maneuvering a great deal more
predictable. The addition of the highly-modified sled with its jumbled
assortment of asymmetrical modifications combined with the considerable damage
to the starboard side of the old ship, made the
Terrier
look even more like some nondescript collection of junk.

They lengthened
the makeshift cable connections that were necessary to maintain operation of
the systems critical to their mission and began to reposition the old ship to
the ambush position they had decided upon. The
Rovers
had been designed for this sort of duty and both men had a
lot of experience moving ships around, so this part of their preparations went
pretty smoothly. Harris practiced minor port-starboard and up-down course
corrections while they were in transit to their new location and found such
maneuvers to be, as expected, sluggish, but doable. He would have to do his
best to keep the old destroyer aligned with the raiders and trust to Hawkins to
fine tune the shot with the manual controls in the turret.

Presuming that they needed to shoot, of course.

"Java?
I've got the perfect piece of wreckage for a
ramming attack over here," announced Carlisle, her hiding spot and other
arrangements apparently up to her requirements. "Looks like it might have
been part of an old crane or something. It's got a wedge shape with a sharp
point on it. The magnetic grappler hooked right on to it. If I aim at the enemy
ship and get it moving at twenty-five or thirty meters per second, I can just
cut power to the grappler and let it go! There's also a battlecruiser over here
with an open cargo bay that I can hide the
Rover
inside of once I give the ram a shove."

"Good work,
Vixen," replied Harris. "I just thought of something else. We're
about to go right underneath the tracking station. I don't know if we'll need
them or not, but I think we'll stop and take the two booster modules out of the
bay on the bottom of the station. If we need to reposition something really
big, it'll be a lot easier with one of the boosters.
Might
need them if we survive this attack.
With the two of us and the
Terrier
right below the station, it
shouldn't take more than ten minutes. What do you think?"

"If you
don't get them now, you won't have a second chance. Better safe than sorry. Are
they very hard to operate?"

"For someone with your skills?
Piece
of cake!"

The two men
maneuvered into position and shifted the boosters out of the recessed bay on
the bottom of the tracking station before securing them to the hull of the
Terrier
into two of the four empty
guided missile racks. The boosters were nearly the same diameter as a missile,
but considerably longer. They hung well out over the stern of the destroyer.
With these additions, the old ship looked even less like something functional.
The task completed, they continued moving the ship to her new location.

"I've done
all I can over here, Java," announced Carlisle. "I'm heading
back."

"Great,
Vixen," replied Harris. "We're about done over here, too. We just
have to finish getting some projectiles into the starboard turret. We should be
done in a few more minutes. Come on back and let's eat and rest up while we
can. As soon as they hit turnover, we'll all have to get back to our
stations."

The two men
finished transferring equal numbers of armor-piercing and explosive projectiles
into the forward turret. With none of the normal automatic loading machinery
functioning, Hawkins would have to load the old railgun manually.

Chapter 27

New Ceylon Orbital Station, Smuggler's Lair,
October 6, 2598.

Oskar Kresge,
outwardly calm, but inwardly in turmoil after learning that the Reclamation
Center had been attacked, fretted and calculated for nearly an hour before
making up his mind that something needed to be done. "Gibbons,
Steuben," he called out, walking up to their table and interrupting their
conversation, "We need to talk. Help me round up the other leaders. Grab a
cup of coffee or something. We'll meet back here in ten minutes." The
three of them split up and went off to round up the others.

Within five
minutes, all three men had returned. They were joined by Jenkins, Allen, and
Clancy Davis-Moore. Kathy Haines arrived a few moments later. Everyone sat
except the Commander.

"I was
noncommittal the last time this subject came up," Kresge began, "but
in view of recent developments I'd like to discuss the feasibility of fighting
back against these invaders." Seeing several frowns, he moved his hands in
a calming gesture. "Hear me out. To be honest, I don't know if we have the
people or the hardware to make anything happen. Help me. I need to know more
about the layout of this station, specifically the location and operation of
communications, the main power generators, ventilation, and anything else that
might be important for us to have control over."

"Most of
that stuff is in the spindle of the station, Commander," said Orville
Steuben.

"If we got
into that area we would control those systems?"

"I think so,
Commander."

"How
difficult are they to run?"

"I don't
know. You'd need a tech type for that."

"Are any of
them among our group?"

 
"I don't think so," said Gibbons,
after a quick scan of the room. "At least I haven't seen anybody.
Steuben?"

"I haven't
seen anybody either."

A recent
conversation tugged at Kresge's memory.

"Murdock,"
he said. "Someone get Helen Murdock, she said she was a tech here a few
years ago."

Within a minute
Helen Murdock had joined the group. Kresge repeated his question.

"It's been a
while, Commander," replied Murdock, "but like most systems these
days, they're pretty much automatic."
 

"How many
people know how to run them?"

"Technical people that can troubleshoot and reprogram?
Probably no more than a dozen.
There'd be at least two of
them in the spindle at all times."

"So some of
them may be in enemy hands?" asked Kresge.

"It's
possible," said Murdock. "Of course, they might have sealed
themselves off in the tech area in the southern portion of the spindle. We
never had to do it but that's what the manual said to do if there was any kind
of security breach."

Kresge looked at
Haines. "Kathy? You said you were there during the initial attack. Do you
have any idea what might have happened to the people in the spindle?"

"I'm not
sure, I headed down to the wheel," she replied. "I did hear Harmon
tell Salvador Vasquez that he and the other security people remaining were to
go southward down into the tech area of the spindle below, shut down the
elevators and jam the hatch above them. There were six or seven of them left, I
think. If they did it
right,
and the terrorists didn't
bring some pretty serious cutting tools with them, then there are at least
eight to ten technicians down there with them."

"How do we
access that area?"

"You'd have
to go up one of the spokes," said Jenkins, "and they're all being
guarded by terrorists."

"Maybe
not," said Steuben, "we could use the maintenance side of the
spoke."

"The
maintenance side?" asked Kresge.

"He's right,
Commander," said Murdock. "The spokes have a wall inside that divides
them into two separate compartments. The compartment on the north side, the one
you're familiar with, has the public elevators and stairways that go to and
from the spindle. What most people don't know is that all of the electrical
conduits, ventilation shafts, and plumbing that channel power, fresh air, water
and sewage back and forth between the spindle and the wheel are located in the
other compartment of the spoke, to the south."

"Can a man
get through that compartment?" asked Jenkins.

"No
problem," said Steuben. "There's a big long ladder that runs along
the flat part of the wall. You know, one of them caged ladders so you can't
fall off?"

"How do we
get into that part of the spoke?"

"There's an
access door for each spoke next to the main stairwell of the ring up on deck
four," Steuben continued. "Next time you're in a stairwell take a
closer look, Commander, the spokes go clear out to the fourth deck.
Makes the whole structure stronger that way.
You hardly
notice the door, it's normal-sized and says 'authorized personnel only' on the
outside."

"Does your
key card work?"

"Yes, we
could use a maintenance key card or my handprint to get in," said Steuben.

"We could
use my security keycard, too," offered Haines.

"My
handprint should work," said Steuben. "I've been in the spokes lots
of times.
It's
weird how the simulated gravity gets
less and less the higher you climb. By the time you get to the spindle, you're
almost weightless. 'Course it's just the opposite coming back out. You gotta be
careful if you go in there."

"Thanks,
Steuben," said Kresge. He turned back to Haines. "What about
communications?"

Haines thought
for a moment before replying. "The communications complex is on deck one
just a little ways down the corridor from the governor's suite," she said
finally. "No doubt the enemy has complete control of that area."

"That's not
good," said Kresge. "We'll need some kind of communications
capability."

"Actually,
there might be something," said Murdock. "There's a small
communications complex in the spindle itself, all the way at the southern end.
They used it while the station was under construction. I doubt the enemy knows
about it."

"Why do you
say that?"

"Because I
don't think the governor or any of his people know about it either. We used the
room for storage while I worked here. You'd have to get all the junk out of it and
then you'd need someone who works with communications to get the equipment back
up and running. I'll help anyway I can but communications wasn't my area."

"Think you
could handle it, Allen?" asked Kresge.

"I think
so," replied the chief.
"Unless it's something
other than standard equipment."
His face lit up. "Does it have
Stage II capability? We could contact the Santana Nexus!"

"Sorry,
we're talkin' station wide communications," said Murdock. "Come to
think of it, there was a Stage I communications console in there. They used it
while they were building the station. It was there while I was working here.
It's probably still there."

"We might at
least be able to warn the Ambassador about the danger," said Allen.

"I wish our
information was better," said Kresge. "We know they boarded the
station through the main airlock on the very north end of the spindle and
they've taken over the first level of the ring. We need to know how much of the
spindle and the ring is under enemy control."

Haines looked
thoughtful. "I doubt they got any deeper into the spindle," she said.

"What makes
you say that
?,
" asked Kresge.

"Because the hatch between the airlock area and the lower
portion of the spindle is too small for a man in battle armor to fit through,
Commander.
Anyone trying to go through there would have to be in a
standard suit or in regular clothing. I'll bet they haven't even tried to go
south!"

"It'd be
great if you were right, Kathy!" said Kresge. "Anybody got any more
information on the spindle area?" Hearing no response, he continued.
"Okay, next we need to find out how many of the enemy there are and where
they're stationed."

"Getting
some better numbers would seem to be our next course of action," said
Davis-Moore.

"Tell all of
our observers that we need a head count on these guys," said Kresge.
"Anything we can get will be helpful. How many terrorists are there? Where
are they located? How many of them have battle armor? How often do they change
guards? Hell, I want to know how often these guys go to the head!"

"We'll do
the best we can, Commander," said Gibbons, "but, from what we've
heard so far, I have the feeling that the enemy is spread pretty thin."

"So do
I
, Dan, but some real numbers would be nice," said
Kresge. "At the same time, remind our people to be careful. We don't want
anyone getting hurt or, just as bad, getting caught and being forced to tell
them about our clandestine little operation here."

"I'll tell
them to be careful, Commander."

"The enemy
is right about one thing," said Kresge.

"What's that
Commander?" asked Haines.

"That people should stay in their quarters.
Tell the
people at the guard stations to send anybody wandering around back to their
quarters unless they bring something we really need, like weapons or combat
experience.
Someone's
either gonna get hurt or, worse,
give us away."

"I think we
have most of the thrill seekers in our group already, but I'll get the word
out," said Gibbons.

"Okay, let's
get back at it everyone. Steuben, show me where those access doors are located,
would you?"

"Follow me,
Commander."

"Haines,
Allen, you'd better come too. If we can get into that spoke, you two are going
up."

Without anyone
seeming to notice, Kresge had all but assumed command of the resistance group.